Obama asks Congress for ‘BRAIN Initiative’

President Barack Obama has proposed an effort to map the brain’s activity in unprecedented detail, as a step toward finding better ways to treat conditions as Alzheimer’s, autism, stroke and traumatic brain injuries.

He asked Congress on Tuesday to spend $100 million next year to start a project that will explore details of the brain, which contains 100 billion cells and trillions of connections.

The amount is a relatively small investment for the federal government, less than a fifth of what NASA spends every year just to study the sun, but it is too early to determine how Congress will react.